people is mighty slippery,
and they might catch me. But I want to beg you to go on away from hyeah
so's you won't be hyeah to testify if dey does. Hyeah's a hundred
dollars of yo' money right down, and you leave hyeah to-morrer mornin'
an' go erway as far as you kin git."

"La, man, I's puffectly willin' to he'p you, you know dat."

"Cose, cose," he answered hurriedly, "we col'red people has got to stan'
together."

"But what about de res' of dat money dat I been 'vestin' wid you?"

"I'm goin' to pay intrus' on that," answered the promoter glibly.

"All right, all right." Aunt Dicey had made several trips to the little
back room just off her sitting room as she talked with the promoter.
Three times in the window had she waved a lighted lamp. Three times
without success. But at the last "all right," she went into the room
again. This time the waving lamp was answered by the sudden flash of a
lantern outside.

"All right," she said, as she returned to the room, "set down an' lemme
fix you some suppah."

"I ain't hardly got the time. I got to git away from hyeah." But the
smell of the new baked biscuits was in his nostrils and he could not
resist the temptation to sit down. He was eating hastily, but with
appreciation, when the door opened and two minions of the law entered.

Buford sprang up and turned to flee, but at the back door, her large
form a towering and impassive barrier, stood Aunt Dicey.

"Oh, don't hu'y, Brothah Buford," she said calmly, "set down an' he'p
yo'se'f. Dese hyeah's my friends."

It was the next day that Robert Fairfax saw him in his cell. The man's
face was ashen with coward's terror. He was like a caught rat though,
bitingly on the defensive.

"You see we've got you, Buford," said Fairfax coldly to him. "It is as
well to confess."

"I ain't got nothin' to say," said Buford cautiously.

"You will have something to say later on unless you say it now. I don't
want to intimidate you, but Aunt Dicey's word will be taken in any court
in the United States against yours, and I see a few years hard labour
for you between good stout walls."

The little promoter showed his teeth in an impotent snarl. "What do you
want me to do?" he asked, weakening.

"First, I want you to give back every cent of the money that you got out
of Dicey Fairfax. Second, I want you to give up to every one of those
Negroes that you have cheated every cent of the property you have
accumulated by fraudulent means.